Those We Keep
by C.A. Elenath
Summary: A young psychic with uncanny powers gets recruited by a powerful crime lord. A streetwise runner double-crosses his boss to protect his brother from past enemies. A B squad cadet searches for the truth in the death of a former Ranger. As their paths converge, the past will finally come to light, including an unspeakable betrayal that forever changed all of their lives. SPD AU.
1. Chapter 1

The clicking noise was really starting to get to him. Z was a fidgeter who vehemently denied it if you called her out and could abolish you from her good graces for at least a week for even less, so Jack had been trying to ignore the sound for as long as he could possibly stand. His car didn't have a functional radio for her to abuse, so she'd started twirling a pen she found under the seat, and that had been fine. The little flutter of movement didn't bother him, not even when the clip caught some light and flashed silver in the corner of his eye. Then, somewhere on the city outskirts, Z had switched from twirling to capping and uncapping the pen repeatedly with one hand, and he doubted she had even noticed the change. They were well outside the city now, farther than he had been in a while, and at that late hour, they had little distraction or company on the road to disturb their almost-silent ride.

_Click. Click. Click._

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" he asked, partly to save his sanity and partly because he really wasn't sure. His first choice wouldn't have been to bring Z at all tonight, but he had been running late, he didn't know where he was going, and he was shit with maps. Under no circumstances could he miss tonight's drop, so he'd asked Z to ride along as his navigator. The tradeoff for being so responsible, however, was having to be reminded of the utter superiority of her navigation skills, which she relayed in a single blistering glance.

"No, Jack," she said. "I just let you drive twenty-six miles in the wrong direction."

It was truly an art how much disdain Z could pack into a single sentence, and Jack was hard-pressed not to smile.

"Just checking," he said lightly. "John was kind of particular about this job."

"When isn't he? We're fine. We're almost there."

It wasn't a question Jack could answer for sure, but based on Z's attitude, he guessed that she and he received very different assignments from their employer. It was another reason he wouldn't have preferred to bring her along, but all he said was, "Good." The clock on the dash, unlike the radio, was functional to the minute and read 1:03. He had twenty-seven minutes to get to where he needed to be.

"What are we picking up tonight anyway?" Z asked.

"'Diamonds.'" He lifted a hand to put air quotes around his words since that was exactly how John had relayed it to him. "'Close to.'"

Z's quiet _huh_ sounded neither impressed nor terrifically interested, which was pretty much how Jack had reacted too when John first told him about the job, only he hadn't actually felt that way. It was a notably odd acquisition for the dealer, who usually traded in more practical wares.

A few more miles rolled by in real silence, then Z asked with deceptive casualness, "Have you heard about Red?"

Jack had, but he hadn't expected Z to bring it up. "Yeah," he said with the same amount of coolness. "I have. Why?"

"Just wondering if you knew anything about it."

It was debatable whether what he knew really counted as knowing anything at all. "Red" was the self-stylized codename for the leader of the city's most powerful criminal ring, the Serpents, and the word going around was that Red was dead, finally done in by an enemy who may or may not have been an usurper from within his own ranks. Jack didn't know nor did he care to know the specifics, but he had a pretty good idea of who would be the next Red.

"Not really," he told Z. "Why would I?"

The look she leveled at him was probing rather than challenging, as if she could extract what he wasn't saying from through his eyes. He had heard of people who could do that—supposedly Red had hired one for his already-formidable crew—but Z wasn't one of them. She was, however, sharp enough to tell that Jack had been holding something back from her. He hated doing it, almost as much as she surely hated being held back from, but the thing was, the reason she was interested was the same reason he couldn't tell her, and possibly the same reason she didn't just outright demand an answer from him. When Z was twelve, the Serpents had murdered her family in their beds, and though she pretended to be unafraid of anything now, he knew she wouldn't handle too well the possibility that Jack might soon have a rather close connection to their Red.

So he kept his mouth shut and let her search his face all she wanted.

Z wasn't one to drag things out, so with a shrug as irreverent as the feet she had up on the dash, she turned back to the road and told him to look out for the next exit. He couldn't tell if she had really let the subject go, but it didn't matter for long because the next off-ramp appeared within a mile, helpfully distinguished in the darkened landscape by a semi-truck slowly making its way through the curve.

Jack followed Z's direction to their destination, which turned out to be a ramshackle bar built like a wooden cabin with a leaning roof and a bunch of kitsch nailed across its front. A bigger, brighter truck stop that was the main draw in the area sat apart in a kitty-corner lot not too far away, yet its neon lights somehow didn't make it over to its shadowy neighbor.

Z took her feet off the dash when they pulled into the bar's lot and started inspecting the vehicles already parked. All the bigger rigs were over at the truck stop; here, there was a mix of box trucks, trailers, and some travel-worn SUVs.

"Any idea who we're looking for?" she asked.

"Nope." There were some open spots near the front of the lot, but he circled back down the far left aisle, deciding that, one, he didn't want to be in view from the bar, and two, it didn't really matter which oversized rides he parked between. He chose a spot midway down where he could pull forward all the way into the adjacent row. That way, if they had to make a quick getaway, he wouldn't have to worry about reversing, which his car occasionally got temperamental about.

"John said they'll know me," he said as he cut the engine.

"Right." Because that was how John arranged most of his gigs. Z opened her door as soon as the headlights were off, and he did the same. Normally he liked to just phase in and out of the car, but there were times, like tonight, when he didn't want to give away his peculiar advantage if he could help it.

"Hey," he called at Z over the top of the car, and when she looked over questioningly, he told her, "Lose the beret."

She looked annoyed. "Why?"

"I don't wanna have to haul you out of there when you decide to punch a guy for calling at you in bad French. Especially if it happens before the drop does."

Z rolled her eyes, but she did oblige by pulling off the hat and chucking it into the backseat. "Gee, thanks. I'm flattered you think it's the hat they're speaking bad French for."

"At least if it's in English, I can tell whether or not they deserved it." He said it lightly because Z didn't welcome anyone speaking or running interference for her, not even him. She also wasn't likely to need it since she had her own peculiar power—an ability to replicate herself in the blink of an eye, and unsurprisingly, she could hit exactly as hard as you'd expect from someone who was three people in one.

The couple of steps leading up to the bar's entrance sagged and creaked beneath their feet, but the inside was better kept than the outside suggested. The pool table near the door looked newly felted, with nary a cigarette burn to be found, and the smoke that hung in the air smelled fresh, if such a thing could be said. The bar top was scarred but not sticky, and a grizzled fellow in a tatty _Alaska_ hat gave up his seat when he saw Z approaching. She favored him with a nod of thanks and he smiled back, all gray and yellow teeth as he touched his cap.

The bartender, for all his human appearance, had a glow to his eyes that was anything but, and it was hard not to stare as Jack ordered a round of beers. After they got their drinks, Z sat with her back to the bar, shimmying a little to the Muzak as she watched the pool game in progress. The players, two guys and a girl clearly dressed for a road trip rather than trucking, weren't shy about looking back.

"You want to join them?" he whispered to Z. "The courier won't be expecting me to have company, and it's probably best not to startle 'em."

"Yeah, sure." Z picked up her beer and walked towards the group, who welcomed her as enthusiastically as if they'd been waiting for her all along. It didn't look like they were playing for keeps, but if they were, Jack hoped they were ready to lose whatever they had wagered.

He turned back to the bar and looked into his beer to avoid catching at the bartender's weird eyes. There was still ten minutes to go before the appointed drop time, and in all the years he'd been a runner for John, he had never had a delivery come early.

The news about Red wasn't surfacing as loudly as it should have, which meant either people thought it was untrue or people who knew either way were conveniently disappearing. After all, the Serpents were as famous for being secretive as they were for being efficient. Anything that was actually true was unlikely to slip from their ranks, and anything else they just didn't like would be dealt with swiftly. An impressively omnipresent _un_presence was the hallmark of their power; though the mere mention of their name made people all over the city sit up straight or run for their life, few could say with any certainty who actually belonged to their ranks. Jack could, but he kept that knowledge to himself because he liked breathing as much as the next guy. Anyone who crossed the Serpents—and you didn't always know that you had—ended up missing or dead in a lot with no sign of how they got dead, and that was a really special kind of terror.

It would take someone of a particular bent to run an operation like that, someone who ran cool, someone who was shrewd to a fault, someone who found ways to control things you didn't think could be controlled.

Someone, say, like Jack's brother, Sky.

The two of them had split up years ago, after Sky started getting more and more involved in Serpent affairs. The cold, gilded dens of a snooty mafia wasn't a place Jack had wanted to follow, nor had Sky wanted him to, even if it meant parting with the only family either of them had left. The split had been rough after living inseparably and having each other's backs on the streets for so long, but eventually the void Sky left behind filled with other things. This gig with John, for example, a well-connected black market dealer who sent Jack to make various drops and deliveries, and through whom Jack met Z, another runner and kindred child of the streets that Jack eventually came to consider like a little sister. John's assignments also frequently came with topical intel as well as tangible goods, and in this way Jack was able to keep sight of his brother, albeit by association, better than he might have on his own.

At exactly 1:30, the bell over the bar's entrance jangled and a tall figure in a hooded sweatshirt walked in. They pulled the hood down as soon as they got inside, revealing a reedy olive green alien who unexpectedly drew less interest than the hood had. They seemed at ease as they made their way to the bar, and Jack had to hide a grin in his beer when he saw that the front of their sweatshirt read CANADA.

The newcomer took the seat to Jack's left and spoke a series of gurgling noises to the bartender that sounded both friendly and like someone drowning. The bartender acknowledged with a flash of his creepy eyes, then the green being spoke another series of gargles, this time at Jack. The words were not at all intelligible, but in his head, he heard a much more pleasing voice say, _Greetings, Terran._

Jack was _not_ a fan of telepathy or anything else that involved getting inside his head no matter how useful or necessary it was, so he couldn't entirely hide his grimace when he lifted his glass in greeting.

"Sup."

The alien said something shorter and subtly tilted their head towards the door. _Pass code? _

Jack nodded and the two of them stood up together. The green being paused to tell the bartender something, probably related to whatever they had said earlier, then started leading the way to the door. On the way out, Jack managed to catch Z's eye. She nodded imperceptibly and then he was outside with his new acquaintance. They walked to the end of the parking lot and slipped between two box trucks where they'd be hidden from view.

_Pass code?_ the alien asked again.

"The Magnificence," Jack said and pulled from his pocket the odd little figurine John had given him. It was a fearsome-looking character in black and silver armor, with razor-like teeth painted right on the sneering helmet. It was also, as far as Jack could tell, nothing more than a child's toy. His skepticism of the dubious protocol had been plain when John handed him the thing.

"It is simple," the dealer had said. "No one expects simple these days."

John was either a few cards short of a full deck or just astonishingly secure in his authority, and it had taken Jack a couple of jobs to learn not to care which it was.

He handed the token to the alien now, who gave it only a cursory inspection before pocketing it. From beneath their sweatshirt, they produced a metal chest that was roughly the same width and depth as their own frame, which raised some serious questions about the anatomy they had under there. They opened the chest and held it out slightly for Jack's inspection.

Even in the dimness of their secluded spot, the contents of the chest glittered like stars on a moonless night. Gemstones the size of almonds filled the box and shone with a faint opalescence from every facet. Jack carefully picked one out and held it up to his eye. He had no idea what he was doing, but the move would let him satisfy his curiosity and hopefully mask his newfound appreciation as shrewd scrutiny at the same time. The stone was triangular in shape and remarkably clear; whether or not they were diamonds, they were surely worth an outsized fortune either way. Even Z would have to be impressed by these.

_Satisfactory?_ the alien inquired.

Jack put the stone back in the chest and nodded. "Very."

The alien closed the chest and handed it over. It was heavier than their easy tri-fingered grip had suggested.

_To silver fire and nefarious desire_, they said, which Jack hoped wasn't part of some protocol he didn't know about. John hadn't said anything about this job involving slam poetry.

"Yeah, uh, same to you."

The green being dipped their head in farewell, pulled the hood of their sweatshirt back up, and ambled off into the night, leaving Jack with a rather conspicuous metal box in his hands and no way of hiding it. Leaving it in the car while he went to get Z wasn't an option, not with such an astronomical cost on the line, nor did he want to walk back into the bar carrying said astronomical cost that he had obviously not possessed earlier when he'd walked out.

It was the kind of thing Sky wouldn't have ever let happen.

With a sigh, Jack stopped pretending to study the graffiti on the truck beside him and considered a plan. There had to be something amongst all the cargo in the lot that he could use to disguise the box. It didn't have to be foolproof, just innocuous enough for him to get in, get Z out, and be on their way. Not all of the truck cabins weren't empty, so he was careful to stay in the shadows as he prowled the lot and only phased into cargo holds where he was sure no one could see him. He found a sack that would support the weight of the chest and piled some groceries on top to hide it from casual view. The end result was about as far from sophisticated as one could get, but on the other hand, he had been needing to hit the supermarket anyway.

When he got back to the bar, his half-finished beer was still there, but it seemed his new green friend had decided not to return. He didn't see Z either, but her new friends were still there, joshing one another while an unclaimed cue leaned against the table. No one in the place had paid him or his new supplies any mind, so he settled gingerly into his original seat thinking it might possibly be okay to let Z finish her game when she returned from wherever she had gone. That darker-haired kid in the group had had eyes for no one else all evening.

With the bag tucked securely between his feet, he signaled to the bartender for another round. Just as the man was filling the second glass, every light in the place cut out, leaving a darkness as thick as soup. For a second, no one seemed to even breathe, then a few people whooped while the bartender cursed. Jack immediately reached down to grip the handles of the sack tightly in one hand, and as he did, he saw a flash of green in the dark.

"Hold on, everyone," the bartender called out in a long-suffering tone before resuming his muttered cursing. It sounded like he was rummaging inside something metallic behind the bar.

"I love you, Danny!" someone shouted at the far end of the establishment, which triggered a round of drunken laughter and hoots.

"Fuck you!" someone else, presumably Danny, hollered back.

"The petrol station across the way seems fine," a much more civilized voice offered.

"So it's just us lucky bastards," the bartender grumbled.

"Some luckier than others," not-Danny agreed.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jack could see the bartender standing now. His night vision had always been better-than-average; something to do with his power, he presumed. Being able to phase through stuff wasn't terribly useful if you couldn't see where you were going, and it wasn't like light existed inside of solid matter. The bartender—whose eyes weren't glowing anymore, Jack noted—was standing next to a panel that Jack hadn't realized could open and kicked at something near the floor. Something hummed to life and a moment later, all the lights came back on, making nearly everyone wince and blink their eyes.

"Everyone okay?" the bartender called, but it was a superfluous question. A few people grunted, then it was back to business as usual. The bartender dumped the two glasses he'd been working on, re-filled them fresh from the tap, and brought them over.

"Thanks," Jack said. He got an eye flash in response.

Someone new walked up before the bartender could move away and took the seat to Jack's left, someone with haphazard brown hair, a green corduroy jacket, and black leather gloves.

"A beer," he said when the bartender glanced at him. "I don't care which."

Then he turned and met Jack's side eye with an unflinching dead-on look. "Hey."

Jack tightened his feet around the bag. "Hey."

There was nothing obviously objectionable about the guy. He had arguably the most disarming face in the room, with an unguarded and unassuming expression that was maybe exactly the right reason to be suspicious. For all of that _Who, me?_ innocence, Jack's gut told him this guy's eye could afford to look at him so directly because it had already seen everything else. What Jack didn't expect was for the guy to prove it almost immediately.

"You should try Dave's Killer Bread," the man in green corduroy said, which seemed like a complete non sequitur until he added, "It's got everything; whole wheat, whole grain, oats, flax, bagels, thin slices—it's the best if you like seeded bread."

Jack didn't, but it had been the only kind available in the truck he'd raided. He made a very firm and very deliberate effort to _not _look down at his feet, where he knew he'd see the top of the loaf he'd stolen sticking merrily out from the top of the sack.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll keep it in mind."

"You're welcome."

The man turned away to study the stock behind the bar and suddenly it was like Jack didn't exist anymore. He wrapped his gloved hands around the glass the bartender had set down for him, but he made no move to drink it.

"Hey, stranger." The sound of Z's voice on Jack's other side was incredibly welcome, but everything about it—her words and her tone—was off. When he spun around towards her, he was greeted by what could only be described as an amorous look, which, it being Z, was about eight hundred shades of wrong. His eyebrows shot up in surprise and he would have actually leaned back away from her if she hadn't grabbed his shirt first.

"Come with me," she said in that caricature of a seductive tone. "I've got a surprise for you."

If her, uh, attentions were supposed to be only for him, her eyes were everywhere else, trying to communicate what she couldn't say aloud. She had already deftly slipped a bill beneath her glass on the bar to cover their bill and her gaze had flickered not once, but twice to the new guy in the green jacket. Her foot was already coaxing the bag out from between Jack's feet.

"Well." He cleared his throat and that at least was genuine. "I'm not gonna say no to that."

He picked up the sack as casually as he could and let Z lead him by the hand to the hallway where the restrooms were. On the way, he spared a brief thought of pity for the dark-haired kid who might never know what had happened this night. Z pulled Jack into the ladies' room, where one of her replicates had been standing guard and who disappeared as soon as they entered. The real Z gestured impatiently at the wall behind the sinks.

"I'm already outside," she said. "We need to get out of here."

Not impatient, Jack realized. Z was panicking, or something like it.

"What's going on?" he demanded when she gave him a little shove towards the sinks.

"I'll explain outside," she insisted. "Or better yet, in the car. Go now while the coast is still clear!"

She gave him another push and this time he went with it, phasing through the sinks and the wall to find another one of Z's replicates waiting outside. Her eyes flashed as the Z inside disappeared, leaving this one to become the "real" Z. All around them, the night air was everything the bar wasn't—cool, fresh, and unrestricted.

"Car," Z said. "Now."

They hightailed it back to Jack's car, where he handed the sack to Z and pulled out of the parking spot without bothering with his seatbelt or the headlights first. The little warning indicators on the dash glared and whined at him, but he only took care of it after they reached the ramp to get back onto the highway. Then both his and Z's eyes were on the mirrors checking for tails. They went a long way before he felt like he could break the tense silence.

"So, are you gonna tell me what that was about?"

"He was a Serpent!" Z burst out. "I saw him take out the courier outside, and then he"—she waved her hand in a circle that Jack totally didn't get—"followed the trail right inside to you."

"Hold up, hold up. What does"—he mimicked the hand circle thingy she had done—"mean? What trail?"

"He's their psychic, Jack," she said more soberly. "The one we heard about, what, six months ago, that Red brought in? He did this"—she did the hand wave again—"in the air and it was like he suddenly knew exactly what had gone down between you and the courier. Did you make the drop at the end of the lot? Between the trucks with the tags on them? And did you hit up another truck on the left side for all this stuff?"

"Yeah…"

"Holy shit." Z slouched down in her seat, no longer worried about watching for followers, and from her frozen expression, he didn't think she was really seeing what was in front of her either.

"Z?" he prodded. It was never good when she got quiet. She and Sky had that in common.

"It took me a minute to figure out what he was doing when he started walking around the lot. It wasn't random; he knew where to go. Every move, every step…" She closed her eyes. "It was actually less creepy before you just confirmed he was right about everything."

"How do you know he's one of Red's?"

"Who else's could he be?"

It was a fair assumption. There was no way the Serpents would have overlooked power like that, and based on what Z had seen, it didn't sound like any of the man's moves tonight had been incidental. Did she say he'd taken out the courier?

"What were you doing outside anyway?"

Z looked down at her lap. "I was in the bathroom when the lights went out and I just—I reacted. I replicated myself outside. I still do that sometimes when something surprises me, especially if it's dark."

Which was exactly how she had survived that night the Serpents came for her family.

"It's okay," he said gently. "We're gonna be okay."

Z shook her head. "If what they say about him is true, what are we gonna do?"

Jack's first thought was that maybe they shouldn't have run away so fast and implicated themselves before they even knew what was going on. Ignorance would be no saving grace if they found themselves caught between John's and the Serpents' interests, and if Jack was going to wind up a dead man, he wanted to at least know why.

Plus, if what they had heard about Red's psychic was really true—that the man could read the past and the future from people's thoughts and from the very air itself, then where was there to run from someone like that anyway?

"I'll talk to John," Jack said. "Maybe he'll know why they'd be interested in a bunch of reflective rocks."

"Okay." Z didn't sound particularly reassured, but the little undercurrent of panic was gone, and she even attempted a smile at him when she added, "Thanks, bro."

"I got you," he said. "I will figure this out. Promise."

Her attempt of a smile turned into a real one, with no challenge, no contempt, and no sarcasm behind it. Jack could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her like that.

"By the way, that thing you did at the bar?" he said.

"Yeah?"

"Please don't ever do that again."

She slugged him in the shoulder. "Ugh! Don't make me need to!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Fifteen years earlier**

Bridge tasted blood when he licked his lip. His mom wasn't going to be happy about that. His right cheek hurt too, but it didn't feel warm and he fervently hoped that meant it wouldn't bruise. The rest of him was dusty from being pushed to the ground and his hands were all scraped up from catching his fall. At least he still had his stuff with him. Danica could have taken it like the other kids sometimes did. She was the biggest girl in the fifth grade; she could have easily stolen his pack and run away with it, or chucked it over the fence that the teachers were always warning students not to jump. The older kids did it anyway, disappearing into the woods behind the school and coming back with stories about killer snakes that would eat you if you were too small or too annoying. Bridge planned to cross the fence one day too, but since it wasn't clear how small was too small, or how annoying was too annoying, he was glad it wouldn't have to be today. Danica had left him, and his stuff, alone after a couple of shoves he wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve, aside from being a lowly second-grader.

He carefully straightened his _Ninja Turtles_ backpack, then turned around to look at the spot where Danica had pushed him. To anyone else, it would have looked like nothing, just a random, empty stretch of the pathway that led around the side of the school, past the trash bins and "the Barn" where they kept the lawn mowers. But to Bridge, it was a stage without actors, and he was the only one who could lift the curtain.

Slowly he raised a hand in front of his face, fingers splayed and his palm carefully turned outward the whole time because everyone knew scrapes didn't start hurting until you looked at them. He moved his hand in an arc through the air, drawing an imaginary window through which he saw a vision of his past self from just a few minutes ago walking by with hunched shoulders and tightly gripping his backpack straps as he tried to ignore Danica's taunts. The image was translucent and a little flicker-y like old movie reels, but otherwise very clear since the energy was so fresh. These time shadows were always clearest for the stuff that happened most recently and sometimes the things that people felt most strongly too. Their color wasn't part of the normal light spectrum, and he wondered if it was the color of time itself.

_Hey freak, I'm talking to you!_

Past Danica appeared at the edge of the vision. When past Bridge kept walking, she caught up with long, stomping strides and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around. That was when he got his split lip and dusty clothes, in that order.

He also got some of her memories, absorbed in the moment when her fist touched his face, and now he knew why she was so angry all the time. Her parents were divorcing and whenever they saw each other now, they spent the whole time arguing, not knowing or caring how it made her feel. Her older brother, once her favorite person in the world, was never home anymore, always finding reasons to stay with friends and giving their parents one more thing to argue about. And her teachers at school, unaware of any of this, kept nagging her to try harder in class because they thought she was being lazy instead of realizing she was really upset inside.

All of this raced into Bridge's brain in the split-second that Danica touched him, leaving him blinking in the dust as his mind tried to catch up and sort it all out. He avoided looking the bully in the eye because he knew that would make things worse, but looking at the sick, muddy green color of her aura all around her wasn't much better. It was darkened from all the hurt and the hate she felt, and was as awful to see as it was to feel so close to him. It was like a melted crayon, or spoiled pea soup.

Repelled and distracted, he stood up without thinking, and Danica, mistaking his distraction for defiance, pushed him down again more roughly than before. He fell back several feet this time, landing on his rear and feeling little rocks bite into his hands when he planted them to keep from bowling over completely. The sudden, sharp heat in his palms brought him back to the present, and the first thing he noticed was that even Danica's shadow, which stretched towards him in the afternoon sun, was bigger than he was. The shadow started to come closer and he threw up his arms in front his face to guard against another attack, but it never came. Instead, Danica—and her shadow—stalked past him without looking back, and that was where the vision ended.

The kids at school thought Bridge was a mind reader, a brain-peeping weirdo who eavesdropped on their thoughts whenever he was in the room. He wasn't, and he didn't, but what he really did do was too hard to explain. He could see auras, the colors around people that told him what they were feeling, but not what they were thinking, except sometimes the two were the same. If someone touched him, he would see things that they had seen before, and sometimes would hear what they were thinking too. The time shadows, unlike the auras, didn't show unless he looked for them, but some were so strong that he saw them anyway without trying.

That was the hard part—when things didn't happen the same way. Somehow that seemed worse than what the other kids thought, so even if he could explain to them the truth, he would be afraid to. When he tried to ignore the stuff he shouldn't know, or only watched the shadows of things he had seen for himself, he still always got the uncomfortable feeling that he was doing something he shouldn't be doing.

**Present time**

Jack and his companion left the bar sooner than Bridge expected, so soon in fact that had it been any sooner, they wouldn't have had a reason to leave at all, assuming Bridge was correct in thinking he was the reason. It was the girl who'd done it. Bridge could feel the alarm emanating from her as soon as she returned from the restroom and saw him sitting there beside Jack. Catching the eye of someone who was already on edge seemed like a bad idea, so he only got fleeting and mostly partial looks at her. What he did manage to glimpse though, he didn't forget. Careless brown hair, a cropped leather jacket, combat boots without any laces. Gold hoop earrings and shrewd brown eyes. Whoever she was, she was someone who didn't like to be fooled and didn't give you the opportunity to. Only when she and Jack had their backs turned did Bridge risk looking at them openly, but they were out of sight in a second, vanishing into the hallway the girl had just come from.

There were no exits down that way, but Bridge wasn't surprised when they didn't come back. The real question was how much of a head start he should give them. Too little time and he might come up too close behind them, but too much time would just be irresponsible. Unless they left New Tech City, which he knew they weren't, they wouldn't be going very far, and so long as they were within the city's borders, he felt sure he'd be able to track them easily. And so long as _that _was true, he didn't think Sky would be too bothered if he allowed a potentially irresponsible amount of time for them to get a jump on him, because they wouldn't be. Also, it was Sky after all who had declared Jack off-limits with no provisos given, and Sky could be very particular when it came to many things.

Bridge gave it ten minutes. By then, he had managed to down half his beer, which was enough to make things a little strange, but not enough to impair anything. He waited until he was outside the bar to remove his glove and pick up Jack's temporal trail—what he had called "time shadows" as a child. The trail was so fresh that he didn't even have to look for it. As soon as he lifted his hand, it was there, the vision of Jack's car leaving the parking lot ten minutes ago overlaying the present in that smoky, unnamed color that his visions were always in.

He left the glove off as he drove down the highway so he could continue to see the trail. If anyone passing him had preternaturally acute vision, they might have been able to see the slight distortion of energy around his fingers, schlieren in the medium of time. Sky said it looked green to him, if he had to give it a color, and when he could see it at all. He didn't always. To Bridge, it had no color, only movement and intensity.

It wasn't too long ago that he might have refused to use his powers this way. His parents, after gaining that first inkling of what he could do, had drilled into him the importance of respecting other people's privacy, a lesson that stayed with him even when he reached the age where questions became more imperative than consequences, and the gray area of what he should or shouldn't do became even grayer.

Then he came to New Tech City and met Sky, who didn't do gray. The Serpent leader had a simpler lesson for him: If you had a power, learn to use it. Otherwise, you had no say in the morality of what you did or didn't do with it.

_If you don't have control, you don't have a choice. You're in a corner._

It was a compelling argument made by someone who lived by it every day. One of the first things Sky had made him do was get comfortable with tracking people using his ability to see the past, and Bridge didn't like to admit that he hadn't needed much convincing.

Following someone while driving was trickier than following someone on foot, but tonight, Jack's trail was as clear as one could ask for, being not even an hour old, plus it was leading a cut-and-dried path back into town. Bridge decided he could afford a minute's distraction to check in with Sky.

"What happened?" the other man asked as soon as he picked up the phone. Pleasantries had never been high on Sky's list of priorities.

"Your brother did," Bridge said. "The drop happened earlier than we were told, and Jack was the receiver. He had the package with him—disguised of course—when I walked into the bar, and then he and his girlfriend left in a hurry. Not _girlfriend _girlfriend, I mean, but girl_ friend._ You know, a friend who's a girl, or a girl who's a friend. I think she might have known who I was, if I am who she thought I was. And still am." He frowned as he puzzled over the correct tense agreement, until Sky cleared his throat loudly on the phone. "Right. I'm following them now, on the highway going back into town. What do you want me to do?"

"Find out where they took the drop, then call me back. Don't engage anyone."

That seemed sensible enough. "On it."

Jack's trail took him down the highway for several more miles before exiting just inside the city border. From there, it snaked through side streets and around half-developed plots with the confidence of someone who knew those routes well, and Bridge wondered if the elaborate detour was meant to throw him off—meaning Jack had expected to be followed this evening—or if Jack was just used to going as unseen as possible in his line of work. Avoiding the major boulevards meant bypassing lights, traffic cameras, and eyes, while skirting construction sites meant using roads that possibly wouldn't be there in the future. Bridge felt mildly impressed as he went around a condominium-in-progress, one that shimmered with the reflection of the moon off of its newly installed window panes, and with a flickering vision of the Italianate building that had once stood in its place.

Eventually his quarry led him to a complex of disused, dockside buildings by the southern bend of the river. There were no lights and no signs of any other people in the area, so when Bridge saw Jack's car slowing down, he decided to park his own car out of sight and follow the remainder of the trail on foot.

He passed by two shuttered warehouses before coming to a wide, empty lane that serviced all the buildings right on the river's edge. These were bigger than their inland neighbors, standing two stories tall, twice as long as they were wide, and clad extensively in beige metal siding. Outside one of these sat Jack's car, not too far from where a personnel door glowed with a faint yellow light.

Bridge frowned as he surveyed the building from across the lane. The only entry points he could see were that personnel door and the roll-up beside it—the windows that lined the monitor roof two stories up didn't count on practical grounds—and the immediate perimeter was completely exposed. He would be caught instantly if someone happened to come out while he was investigating the ways in. With no convenient way to determine what was going on inside, he decided to stake out the door for a bit and see if Jack and his companion emerged soon.

The logical place to hide would have been the narrow alley between the buildings across the lane. However, the large, dark sculpture that loomed in front of one of them looked far more interesting. Its presence in the otherwise unadorned landscape made more sense when he got closer and realized the property behind it had once been a smith shop. The sculpture was all curving iron and rivets, probably a piece meant to demonstrate the prowess of the proprietor. Bridge liked it because it reminded him of the rib cage of some elephantine beast.

The cover wasn't perfect, but he'd be invisible enough in the night if he stayed still. The alley was a leap away if he needed it. He hoped he wouldn't have to wait too long.

A few minutes later, Jack and his companion emerged from the building still carrying the sack he had used to camouflage the drop parcel. He held the bag much less carefully now, leaving it to swing by its handles at his side. It swung easily, Bridge noted, suggesting that it had been relieved of some of its burden. The two also seemed more relaxed than they had been before, trading jibes on the way to the car though they did survey the darkness around them before getting in. When they drove away, they didn't go back the way they had come.

The light had been left on behind them. Bridge didn't sense anyone inside the building anymore, but nor did it feel like it was empty. Intrigued by the contradiction, and not terribly good at resisting its draw, he left his hiding place and moved closer. He skulked down the long side until he reached the rear of the building, where he found the only set of windows at ground level. They were grimy and cloudy from age, but he could make out a small interior room with a desk inside, perhaps an office of some sort. The door into the room from the main space was open, but it was too dark to tell what lay beyond it.

Unsurprisingly, the windows were all locked or rusted shut, so he moved on, rounding the corner to face the back side of the building. The sound of the river dominated here, its water lapping tirelessly at the short, rocky embankment not thirty paces away. A low chain-link fence marked its edge.

There was a personnel door on this end too, and after a moment's deliberation, he decided it was going to be his way in. He listened for sounds inside first and when he heard nothing, he deftly picked the lock—an old pin-tumbler job—and eased the door in. Still no sounds and no sense of anyone inside. He peered around the edge of the door carefully and gauged the scene.

Aside from some modular rooms in the corners, including the one he had seen through the window, the interior was one big cavernous space full of industrial racks and shelving that rose at least fifteen feet high. The overhead lighting was wan and patchy, flickering valiantly in some places and entirely absent in others. He noted where the deepest shadows were so he could avoid them.

He stepped out from behind the door, slipped it shut, then quietly headed towards the pallet racks that began deeper inside the building. Despite the abundance of storage space, only a few rows were being used, and those were only moderately stocked. There didn't seem to be any kind of organization scheme in place. Wooden crates, metal trunk boxes, and other parcels wrapped all sorts of ways cohabited randomly across the shelves with some things no one had bothered to wrap at all. He paused beside a transparent globe that contained what looked like metal shavings from one angle and solid obsidian from another. One section over, two large pallets wrapped in plastic listed severely in opposite directions, as if they were being repelled by the immaculate silver cube that sat between them.

All of the curios admittedly distracted him for a good several minutes, but as he came to the end of the row, he remembered what he had come for. He started to reach for his glove so he could find exactly where Jack had left the drop parcel, and that's when he heard a strange metallic chitter behind him.

He turned and ducked just in time to avoid getting clocked by a figure shrouded entirely in black. Even their face was covered, never a good sign, but more ominous than that was the fact that he couldn't feel their presence whatsoever, and he was looking straight at them. Every being, as far as he knew, had some type of mental signature, a minimal level of _there_-ness that he was able to detect, even through walls, and so he usually always knew when someone was nearby. To see someone—or something—so obviously physically present, yet have the rest of his senses tell him nothing was there was more than a little disorienting.

At least it explained how they'd managed to sneak up on him, and that empty-yet-not-empty read he'd gotten on the building earlier.

The figure, whoever they were, swung at him again, and this time he caught their arm. He meant to throw them off, but the arm turned out to be solid, stiff, and superhumanly strong. He let go at once before they could pull it back and take him with it, then retreated several steps to rethink his strategy. The figure chittered at him some more, a series of synthesized noises whose meaning was lost on him, but did follow a discernible speech pattern. He might not understand what they were saying, but they were obviously saying something.

"Uh…" As he considered how one might reply in such a situation, he slowly inched a foot in the direction of the aisle beside him, as if he meant to make off that way. The figure bought his feint and lunged forward immediately, like a bloodhound on the scent. He sidestepped their hurtling form and shoved them with all his strength into the corner struts of the rack. The resounding_ clang_ was unmistakable. Either his foe was clad head-to-toe in a metal suit, or they were potentially nothing but. The stiffness of their limbs and choppy movements didn't suggest any kind of organic being.

Not wanting to squander the brief upper hand he'd gained, he grabbed the figure again and swung them around hard into the neighboring rack. They still didn't fall, but they were clearly malfunctioning now, unable to straighten up from their awkward slump against the rack and scissoring their arms fruitlessly in front of them. He wanted to pull off their hood so he could see who or what he was facing, but more chitters sprang to life around him, this time from all directions. He looked up sharply, almost afraid of what he'd see.

Four more figures, all fully swathed like the first, had appeared and they were boxing him in—one to either side of him, one at the far end of the aisle he stood beside, and one _above _him, standing like a sniper on the very top shelf.

And these were all armed.

He swore as he sprinted down the narrow aisle, straight toward the stinger-like weapon being pointed at him, then at the last second sprang into the rack on his right, just as the first laser blast streaked by. He rolled across the shelf all the way into the next aisle, wincing as the wooden slats dug into his shoulders and elbows. He hit the floor hard, but managed to keep moving until he got his hands and feet under him. In the same breath, the figure who had been guarding the first aisle leaped into this one, and he quickly knocked their legs out from under them before scrambling to his feet.

Now he was running down the center of the warehouse towards the door he had entered through. Two more figures—or were they the same ones?—stood in his path, weapons aimed, and there was nowhere to dodge their fire unless he veered off into the shelves again, which would provide cover, but prolong his escape. The steel constructions, which had seemed cool at first in all their towering uniformity, now started to resemble a sinister jungle gym, one he was ready to get out of.

He stayed his course, knowing he'd have to be fast. He tugged his left glove loose, then stripped it off with his teeth so he could scan the air with one hand while he reached for his stunner with the other. It wasn't the past he was looking for this time. This time, the vision that sprang to life over everything was of the future. He saw the shots that would be fired, their sequence and their deadly paths. Two figures were behind him as well as in front, forming a mirror image of each other.

He'd have to be curveball fast. Heartbeat fast. Hair's width fast.

The first shot came from the fore. He cut sharply right, returning fire as the yellow laser blast streaked past his ear. Then he zagged the other way, dodging simultaneous blasts from behind and ahead, and fired at the remaining figure in front of him. Two down. He spun around, squeezed off another shot, then dropped down hard. A laser blast sailed over his head as his shot picked off number three.

His next shot missed.

Without enough leverage to get back on his feet quickly enough, he threw himself sideways to avoid the next blast that came for him. It burst into a shower of sparks when it hit the concrete, leaving a scorch mark where he had been not one millisecond before. He rolled onto his stomach and raised his weapon. It was a terrible vantage point, and a terrible angle that hurt his shoulder if he raised his arm too far. He could only sort of see his last target, who blended into the shadows in their black garb, and the spots in his eyes from the fireworks of the last blast certainly didn't help.

His final shot was all prescience, no actual sight, and it hit home.

He flopped down onto the ground with a huff that felt like his first breath since that initial sprint. It may or may not have actually been; his awareness of time diminished whenever he watched two times at the _same_ time, but it didn't seem like the fight could have lasted that long. Either way, he was glad breathing wasn't something he had to remember to do in order to do it, on top of everything else he'd been doing.

He picked himself up, keeping his glove off and his stunner out even though he hadn't seen any more surprises coming. The two figures who had blocked his path to the door had fallen in a heap together, yet their black coverings had somehow managed to stay in place. He went and crouched down beside them and carefully pulled the hood off of one of their heads.

A silver mask studded with large black circles in a vaguely face-like pattern shone dully in the dim light. An equal-sized red bulb, more convex and reflective than the circles, was set into the forehead. With the butt of his stunner, he lightly rapped on the side of the mask, then did the same against the collarbone, or where the collarbone would have been had the figure been human. They were an automaton of some kind, made of metal through and through. He wasn't terribly surprised, not after what he'd seen of them. Still, he reached over and pulled the hood off the second figure, just to be sure. An identical silver mask stared out at him.

Despite wanting to know more—he'd been into robots since he was a little kid—he stood up and left the figures where they were. Tonight was not the time to indulge in curiosity. Or, at least, not any more than he already had. That didn't mean, however, that he had to leave empty-handed. With one final scan of the air, he found the place where Jack left the drop and scooped the box up. It took some effort not to get mesmerized by the intricate, baroque-esque curves of the metalwork covering its surface, and he suspected that was the very intent of the design. There was a similarly disquieting energy around the chest too, one that made him feel squirmy, like the touch of shag carpet on his skin, or too much paisley. Luckily the feeling didn't intensify from holding the chest, but it did deter him from opening it. Sky had already told him what was inside anyway—crystals of extraterrestrial origin, and he figured the weird energy had something to do with the frequency at which they resonated.

He made it back to his car without incident, where he wedged the chest in between some toolboxes in the trunk. Either the distance or all the metal or both dampened the energy so he couldn't feel it anymore when he was inside the car, and that was a relief. He called Sky back using the car's interface, and the other man wasted no words.

"So?"

"I have the drop," Bridge said. "Jack took it to Dock 23, in the southern bend."

"And you just took it back?"

"No, but technically maybe yes because I technically didn't run into any people. There were these robots dressed all in black, and they were like—" He started to mimic the metallic chittering noises they had made, but then realized that that probably wouldn't mean much to Sky. "Yeah, so they showed up and I had to take them out to get _me_ out."

"I thought I said not to engage anyone."

"Technically they engaged _me_."

There was a brief silence in which Bridge could feel Sky's exasperation even through the phone.

"Robots, huh?" the other man said. "What were they like?"

"Their heads look like whiffle balls." Bridge had been holding onto that thought since he first saw the figures' faces, and it felt good to finally verbalize it. "They're strong, but not very flexible, in their movement or their programming. They didn't adapt very well to a moving target. Their shooting's so-so.

"Hey, did I just find John's storehouse?" he added.

"I think you did. One of them, anyway."

"I didn't expect that, mostly because I wasn't expecting anything at all, but I guess I should have since that's who Jack works for."

"Does Jack know you took the drop back?"

"I don't see how he could. Yet, anyway. I waited until he and his girl friend left before I went in."

"Good. I'm still at the club. Bring the drop here."

"Be there in fifteen, give or take a few depending on road maintenance, and how many stoplights are in flashing mode, and whether any trains come in because Pacific Union does tend to run more at night, and that would add more than just a few minutes since—"

Sky hung up.

Bridge stared at the flashing "call ended" icon for a moment before putting his car in gear and taking the most expedient route he knew to the club. One of these nights, he wanted to try Jack's style of traveling by discreet roads, but it'd have to wait until he had some leeway for experimentation. Maybe a lot of leeway. For someone who could read time backwards and forwards, he had a terrible sense of direction.


	3. Chapter 3

John was a strange man even by New Tech City standards. Standing six foot two, built like a linebacker, and blessed with coal black hair and a wardrobe to match, he cut an imposing figure, but the thing Jack noticed the most was how he sometimes spoke with all the glee of a schoolboy playing war in the gravelly rasp of a long-time smoker. Not that Jack had ever seen a cigarette in his hand. It was with that distinctive voice and a flapping trench coat that John first approached Jack and asked if he wanted to work for him. The job was simple: show up where and when he was told, transport goods from point A to B, and don't get caught. The compensation would be cash, or a share of the spoils if it was within reason, and if he did get caught, he was on his own.

For lack of other plans more than anything, Jack accepted the offer. It didn't take long for John to notice how good he was at smuggling things—though Jack kept his peculiar reason for that to himself—and soon the dealer was calling on him for the plum jobs, the ones he was willing to pay the most for because they typically involved the most expensive goods.

The diamonds gig had ranked up there, though the more Jack thought about it, the less certain he was whether the price had had to do with the rocks or with the risk from a group nobody wanted no trouble with. He also had an abiding paranoia that John actually knew about his connection to the infamous ring, such as it was, and wouldn't hesitate to exploit him for it if he could. The thing was, there was nothing exploitable in that relationship, and Jack really didn't want to get sent into fires just because his boss thought he was fireproof.

The two of them were meeting at Piggy's tonight, an illegitimate mobile eatery with a barely palatable menu and whose real business was deniable conversations. Piggy, the proprietor and sole staff member, was supposedly one of the first aliens to arrive in New Tech City, and was very conversant in the who-was-who and what-was-what of everything illicit within its borders. He knew, for instance, that Jack was a favorite of John's, so as soon as Jack sat down, well ahead of his boss like usual, Piggy slunk over and plunked a glass down in front of him.

"On the house," the proprietor said in a congested voice as unctuous as his demeanor. Jack tipped the glass in thanks, then stared at the owner with a sorry excuse of a smile until he went away. The drink, whatever it was, tasted strong enough to strip paint off a wall, and it was just as well because the only offerings Jack would have trusted to be fit for humans would have to have enough alcohol in them to kill whatever else might have killed him first. The taste aside, it wasn't an entirely unpleasant concoction. The evening was cold and just a few sips left a comfortable fire in his belly.

As he waited, a few more customers trickled in, all of them notably taking tables as far away from him as possible. That could have been Piggy's doing since the owner was making a credible attempt at affording Jack privacy, mostly by pretending to ignore him. Or it could have been plain old prejudice, not for being dark this time, but for being human. Distrust still ran deep between aliens and humans, especially those living in hard times.

A sudden red glow at the edge of his vision made him turn, but all he saw was John strolling leisurely towards his table, hands tucked in the deep pockets of his trademark coat. The dealer grinned when he saw Jack looking, revealing a set of gleaming white and impossibly even teeth. Jack lifted his chin a little in acknowledgment, but didn't attempt any other kind of expression because it would have undoubtedly come out as a grimace. For all of John's easy posturing, Jack knew he better appear damn well grateful for the gig and for John's favor even if it brought more unwanted attention instead of less.

"Jack." That gravelly voice just wasn't something he could get used to. Besides being so rough that it made him want to clear his own throat, it often sounded like it came from some place other than John. A few times—and it had taken Jack a while to put his finger on this one—John's words didn't quite follow his mouth, and in retrospect, Jack was glad he hadn't been able to figure it out in the moment because that shit was creepy as fuck. Nowadays he avoided looking at John's mouth whenever the dealer spoke.

"Sup, John. All's well, I trust?"

"Quite well. And yourself? Have you done anything with your share of the gold yet?"

Though Jack hadn't been involved in the job, one of his payments had, out of the blue, come in the form of tiny gold bars sealed in tiny protective packaging. Their tracking numbers were stamped clearly into the metal, so Jack suspected that John wasn't being generous so much as he was betting that most of his runners didn't have the means to anonymize the bars in order to spend them, nor would they lose or discard such pieces, which meant John could collect them back whenever he wanted and could probably pay whatever price he felt like too.

"Nope, still just sitting on it," Jack said. "Thought I'd wait for the market price to improve. No one is interested in spongy Earth metal right now, I guess."

"Not on its own, perhaps," John said mischievously, and Jack knew better than to ask questions.

Piggy chose that moment to sidle back over, this time with a tall silver tumbler overflowing with vapor. "Welcome back, your eminence," he simpered, setting the cup down in front of John with a flourish. "This one's on me."

John wasn't annoyed by the interruption like Jack thought he would be. Instead, he picked up the tumbler and took a thoughtful swig. "I see you took my suggestion to add more jalapeños. This is much better than that last cup of sludge you served me."

"I'm glad you approve, your eminence."

"Your sniveling, however, could use some improvement. Leave us. Jack and I have business to discuss."

"Of course." Piggy turned to Jack briefly. "A refill?"

"I'm good, thanks."

The proprietor scurried off, and John threw back another mouthful of drink before settling his eyes on Jack. "You said you have something to speak to me about?"

"Yeah..." Jack decided it was worth the hesitation to organize his next words. "It's about that last run I did—which was delivered successfully, by the way—but I think there was someone else after it. After the drop, this guy shows up pretty much immediately inside the bar and takes the seat right next to mine. He doesn't say nothing outright, but he knows I've got the package on me and he isn't bothering trying to be subtle about it. He even orders a beer like he's got nothing else to worry about." Jack glanced at John. "I think he was one of Red's."

"I see. What makes you think he was working for Red?"

"Do you remember what people were saying about Red supposedly having brought on a psychic?" John nodded. "Well, this guy would definitely fit the bill. Somehow he traced exactly where the drop happened, every step of it, and when he came and sat down next to me, he gave me this look, and I got the weird feeling that he just...knew. Like, the way he'd seen everything that happened already, he also saw everything around us without barely looking up. Maybe he even saw what was gonna happen too."

The whole of that came out sounding only a little dumber than Jack had expected, and he quickly moved on before he could dwell on it futilely.

"He didn't try to stop us when we left, and no one followed us on the way to the warehouse. No one we could see, anyway," Jack conceded. He leveled his gaze with John's as evenly as he dared. "Was Red after that drop?"

The dealer, who had been listening patiently the whole time, leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and looking so genuinely pensive that Jack started to hope maybe he really didn't know anything about it.

"I was not aware of any other interest in that delivery," John said finally. "But, as with all of them, that does not mean it doesn't exist. It is just a matter of who is interested enough to make an appearance, and as it turns out, Jack, your man, whoever he was, was interested enough. After you left the warehouse, someone came and stole the crystals back. They took out five of my guards to do it."

Jack's mouth dropped open. He still remembered how relieved he and Z had been when they were finally driving away from the warehouse, the package definitively out of their hands—John's news pretty much skewered that feeling all the way through. He was also startled that the job had been undone so quickly after. It was unsettling even after the fact to know that whoever had done it had probably not been far behind them after all, a pursuer both unseen and unshakeable. Someone apparently capable of taking out five of John's guards.

For the first time since that night, Jack thought about the man at the bar. How extraordinarily ordinary he had been, a consummate Joe Blow. Jack would probably forget his face in a week. He already forgot what the guy sounded like.

John was still waiting for Jack to say something, and when he didn't, the dealer mused a little too coolly, "It is a formidable foe you have led to us."

Jack didn't miss the censure in his boss's words. "Nothing we can't handle though, right?" he replied, hoping bravado wasn't the wrong way to go.

John raised one dark eyebrow, and the look he gave Jack was frankly appraising. Jack waited, idly fingering his glass like the look didn't bug him, and after a stillness that felt longer than it probably had been, John said, "That's what I like about you, Jack. Fortune favors the bold, as do I. It is a surer trait than whatever it is you believe to be true about Red's man."

Jack shrugged, aware that John had just managed to compliment and chide him in the same sentence. "You kind of need it in this job, don't you think?"

"Undoubtedly. And in fact, given this turn of events, I may have another job for you, one that you can no doubt _handle_."

The way that last word came out started up something queasy in Jack's stomach, but when John raised his tumbler for a toast, Jack did the same because that was what you did when your boss expected you to.

"To the bold," John said, and Jack drank anyway.

* * *

The first time Jack laid eyes on Marie had been under the flashing lights at Harlequin, where she sparkled in a little blue number and moved with abandon no matter what kind of music was playing. He would come to learn, several rendezvouses later, that she owned several such sparkly numbers in a rainbow of colors, but the blue one remained his favorite—first impressions and all that, but also because it made her gray eyes go blue whenever she wore it.

Tonight she had on red, bright as a firetruck inside the club, but in the darkness of his car, it had dimmed to a lustier hue. They were both warm from an evening of dancing and drinks, too warm to make it home and too warm to keep their hands to themselves. Jack happily roamed the expanse of skin exposed by a shirt that barely qualified as clothing, and Marie nimbly returned the favor, her lithe fingers trailing fire everywhere as if his clothes weren't even there.

They were well on their way to third base when an explosion rent the night air, rattling the car's windows and making Marie scream. Jack tightened his arms reflexively when she collapsed against his chest, and for several seconds they lay together stock-still, their panting breaths and pounding hearts eclipsed by the ringing in their ears.

"What the stars was that?" Marie's voice sounded muffled and far away despite her mouth being only inches from his face. She pushed herself up on her arms to try to get a look outside.

"Hey." He tried to coax her back down by constricting his hold. "Be careful."

She pushed his arms away and rolled off him to crouch in the space behind the front seat, where she tugged her sort-of-shirt back into place impatiently. He couldn't see her expression with the way she was turned, but he saw her stiffen when the screaming started in earnest somewhere in the distance.

"We can't just stay here," she said, and was out of the car before he could protest. He sat up and scrambled after her with far less grace.

"What are you doing? You know you're supposed to run away from explosions, not towards them, right?"

"I'm trained in field medicine," she said, which was news to him. "If there are people hurt, I could help them. Are you coming or staying?"

Jack didn't know what he could do in an emergency like this, but Marie was clearly on the verge of running off and wasn't going to wait for anything, not even for him to insist she at least wear his jacket, which had been left in the car. So he ran with her, his mouth twisted the whole way at how unprotected she was by the little glittery strings across her back, the same strings he had thanked God for just minutes ago.

They skidded to a halt when they reached the main street, which had gone from hot spot to hot zone. People were streaming out of clubs and restaurants and running panicked in multiple directions. Several cars parked along the curb were overturned or aflame while others had been abandoned in the street, their doors hanging open with the engines still idling. A geyser of water spewed twenty feet in the air where a fire hydrant had been knocked over.

Even as they stood rooted by the sight, laser blasts streaked overhead and hit the scaffolding affixed to a building being repaired. Steel bars and wooden planks shattered on impact, flying with deadly force into the crowd below. Then all seven stories of the structure began to simultaneously collapse and tip forward, ripping away from the building bar by bar.

"We shouldn't be here!" Jack shouted over the renewed wave of screams, but Marie wasn't looking at him or the lurching disaster that was happening almost comically slow. Instead, her frozen stare was locked on a creature standing atop a light pole half a block away in the other direction. It was humanoid in shape and dressed in a black jumpsuit. Its silver head, probably a mask or a helmet of some kind, was studded with holes like a wiffle ball. Most notably, its right forearm seemed to have been replaced by an absurdly large gun barrel.

In the next moment, three things happened, possibly at the same time or possibly split seconds apart, he really couldn't tell. One, the seven-story scaffold finished collapsing in a thunderous and ground-rattling boom. Two, the creature on the light pole began firing into the street again, but it didn't seem to have a specific target this time. Three, Marie darted into the fray without any warning, and though he sprang after her the instant he realized it, he was already several paces behind.

An older couple sat in the middle of the street, speckled with dust and looking lost in the smoky air. The woman had her arms around the man awkwardly, holding him up as a gash on his head bled freely. It wasn't clear from a distance whether or not he was conscious. Marie dropped down on the man's other side and put an arm around his back to aid in propping him up.

"What happened?" Marie asked the woman.

"Here." Jack knelt down beside her. "Let me." Marie nodded and they carefully shifted the man's weight from her arm to his.

"He was hit by a beam when that platform came down," the woman said fretfully. "He says everything's spinning and he doesn't think he can stand."

Marie nodded in understanding and offered gentle reassurances, introducing herself and Jack as well. The woman, whose name was Paula, looked relieved for the help and grew more so as Marie asked the man's name—"Everybody calls me Lenny"—and proceeded to check his pulse, reflexes, and eyes, patiently explaining everything she did or was about to do in a clear and calm voice.

"I'm going to examine the wound on your head now. Hold it still and raise a hand if you need me to stop."

Marie rose onto her knees and very carefully laid her hands on either side of the gash, which continued to pulse blood, but not as heavily as before. The look in her eyes was sharp and probing, and Jack wondered what exactly she was looking for. Her silence and focus, for the several seconds it lasted, unfortunately also emphasized the havoc still going on all around them and he began to feel a twinge of impatience.

"Lenny, is everything still spinning?" Marie asked.

The man opened his eyes slowly, looking suspicious at first, then surprised as he opened them the rest of the way. "No. Well, a little. It's better than it was, a lot better."

"Good. Does anyone have something I can wrap this wound with?"

"I have a scarf," Paula volunteered at once, and pulled the item from her handbag. It was a pretty peach-colored thing, gauzy but long. Marie folded the cloth in half, then deftly wrapped it around Lenny's head over the wound. Blood immediately seeped through the delicate fabric, and Jack thought it was kind of a shame that Paula would probably have to throw it out after this.

"We can move him," Marie declared. Though her manner was all business, Jack could see the gratitude in her eyes when she looked at him. "You ready?"

He nodded at the same time Lenny said, "Let's blow this popsicle stand."

Marie went around to his other side to take Paula's place, but the older woman protested.

"I'm sprier than I look," she insisted, and carefully wedged herself beneath her husband's arm. Marie didn't contest her, but stayed close in case she needed the help after all. On the count of three, Jack and Paula slowly levered Lenny to his feet. His first few steps were halting, but eventually grew more sure, and he was supporting most of his own weight too, which Jack assumed was a good sign.

As the four of them made their way toward the nearest escape route, Marie's head suddenly swiveled towards something only she had heard.

"I'm going back," she said. "There might be others who need help." She laid a hand on Paula's arm, but her gaze included all of them as she asked, "Will you be all right going the rest of the way?"

Jack didn't like it, not at all, but it wasn't his permission she was looking for.

"We'll be all right now," Paula answered for them. "Thanks to you, dear. Both of you." She glanced over at Jack as well. "God bless, and be careful."

"God bless," Lenny echoed, smiling for the first time.

"Thank you," said Marie. "To both of you as well."

She didn't leave without giving Jack one last look, this one reserved purely for him. It said _thank you_, it said _I'm sorry_, and it said _let me go_. Something in his chest tightened when she ran back into the bedlam and disappeared from sight.

When he finally looked away, both Paula and Lenny were regarding him sympathetically, and somehow that made it worse.

"Let's go," he said, forcing himself to focus.

Until this point, the wail of sirens had been a steady but distant sound for some time. They abruptly began to grow louder and reached a crescendo when a white motorcycle came speeding up the main avenue behind the attacker, its flashing red lights lighting up the buildings on either side. Its tires squealed as the rider skid sideways into an abrupt halt and jumped off almost before it stopped moving.

"SPD!" the rider shouted, and though he wore a red helmet, his voice rang out as loud and as clear as if he had used a megaphone. He could be heard over the noise of the chaos and down the entire block, and more than a few people turned their heads at the sound.

"Put your weapon down and your hands up!" the Red Ranger ordered. The weapon he leveled at the creature on the light pole didn't look like much competition for its oversized arm gun, but surprisingly, the creature complied. It bent its arms upward in a quick, jerky motion and stayed that way for all of half a second before a black-and-white Jeep bearing the same red sirens and "S.P.D." logo as the Red Ranger's motorcycle came skidding up. The creature immediately took aim and fired at both the Red Ranger and the Jeep. Four more people in brightly colored suits leapt out of the vehicle at the same time, weapons materializing in their hands and returning fire before their feet even touched the ground. One of their shots managed to knock the creature off the pole.

"Lee, Solan, secure the civilians!"

The Pink and Yellow Rangers broke away as commanded, and the Blue and Green Rangers shifted positions to cover for their loss. Together with the Red Ranger, the latter formed a triangle around the creature in an effort to contain it.

Pink and Yellow split up as they hurried towards the crowd, each one covering a side of the street as they rounded up stragglers and cleared a path for those who had been reluctant to leave the relative safety of the buildings.

"Stay together and keep moving!" the Yellow Ranger shouted. The mere presence of the Rangers, however, seemed to have inspired a greater calm and orderliness in the crowd already. As Jack passed by, the Ranger touched his shoulder with a gloved hand.

"There are ambulances on the next block if you need them," he said, and it was really, really weird to hear his voice like he wasn't wearing a helmet at all. Jack just nodded and the Ranger moved on.

"Well, wasn't that something," Paula said after the three of them finally made it off the main avenue. Some of the people were gathering in a wide green space adjoining a church on the next block, one guarded by officers from both SPD and the NTPD around the perimeter. A triage area for the wounded had been established at the far end beside several ambulances that lined the curb, exactly as the Yellow Ranger had promised.

The resounding boom of renewed gunfire out on the main street made Jack start, and he wished he could feel the same kind of reassurance everyone else seemed to whenever the Rangers showed up. To them, the Rangers were heroes, the guardians of New Tech City and Earth from malignant forces and powerful crooks. To Jack, SPD had been nothing more than glorified cops with egos as big as their giant metal doghouse in the middle of the city.

As Jack and Paula approached the triage area with Lenny, an EMT ran up and guided them to a station. Together they lowered Lenny onto the cot, and Jack felt a small pang of guilt over his relief at finally being free. Lenny and Paula were sweet people, the kind that would have been nice to meet under other circumstances.

"Go after her," Lenny said unexpectedly, as if he'd read Jack's mind. When Jack looked at him in surprise, the older man just smiled knowingly in return. His gaze, Jack noted, was quite steady now.

The EMT moved in with their equipment, displacing Jack politely but firmly and cutting off his chance to reply. Still Jack hesitated, not wanting to be rude by leaving abruptly. But Paula was already sending him an air kiss in silent thank you while Lenny made shooing motions behind the EMT's back. Jack grinned and finally turned away.

The majority of people were actually bypassing the green space and moving on towards destinations unknown. Those who stopped seemed to be the ones who needed help or, like him, were searching for others. As Jack jogged down the center pathway, flashes of red teased him from here and there, but none turned out to be who he was looking for, and he'd made sure to look carefully—Marie was shorter than just about everybody he knew.

Back on the sidewalk now, he paused to consider the flow of people still funneling through the cross streets. Though the volume had thinned considerably, to the point where there were actually gaps in between people, the thought of trying to swim upstream against them was still intolerable.

"Screw that," he muttered.

He darted through the stream and put several more meters between himself and the crowd before he turned and ran straight through the wall of the building. Normally he was more discreet with his power, but tonight he figured anyone who thought they saw a guy running through walls could chalk it up to stress. He phased through everything in his path until he emerged back on the main street.

The battle had been pushed another block down, but the Rangers were now beset by several of those wiffle-headed things. Jack wasn't normally a voyeur, but this was one fight he couldn't look away from. A far cry from the petty skirmishes he knew between rabble with interests to protect and pride to lose, this was an all bets off, headlong, full contact clash with guns and batons and fists and mettle and not so much as a shield to hide behind. Sparks flew as steel collided, and the sounds easily crossed the distance to reverberate through his insides.

It wasn't until one of the creatures blew up—taking out a car, a tree, and a storefront with it—that Jack realized the things were robots, and that explained some shit, like having cannons for limbs, and the funky way they moved, and why they didn't flinch or falter when they got hit, not unless it fucked them up completely. Even the Rangers weren't immune to feeling punishment like that, not from what he could see.

He also saw that the amount of force in that shot that took out the wifflehead was stupidly dangerous. The street—and anyone on it—wasn't gonna survive that. The Rangers fought the way they did, in close contact, in order to meter the heat, both theirs and their enemies', because if they didn't, there wouldn't be anything left to save. They did inarguably withstand those lasers better than anything else did.

A direct volley drove the Red Ranger nearly to his knees, and their funny colored suits suddenly didn't seem so funny anymore.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye diverted Jack's attention, and he turned in time to see a shadow detach itself from the darkness beneath an awning. Black coat a-fluttering, it came over to stand beside him.

"Quite the show, isn't it?" John said, not looking the least bit perturbed by the raging battle. Jack hoped he meant only the battle. The thought that John might have seen him use his phasing ability just now made him apprehensive, so he carefully kept his eyes on the fight as well.

"Yeah, it is."

"That is respectable power. It doesn't belong in the hands of children." Jack froze, but John seemed to mistake his silence for insult. "No offense, Jack. I suppose the Rangers could be about your age." John held up his hands. "Not that I wish to make assumptions."

Jack echoed the gesture. "It's all good. What, if I may ask, are you doing out here anyway?"

"A little reconnaissance of sorts. I've learned of a potential new acquisition whose properties sound rather like that." He nodded towards the Rangers. "If the talk proves true..." The dealer's eyes gleamed. "Power is the real prize. Not money, not reputation, not pleasure, though those have their uses. Power, and the ability to control it, is what separates the strong from the weak, the rulers from the subjects," he gave Jack a side glance, "the bold from the meek."

"Right." Jack employed his best intelligent nod. "Is that what the talk says?"

John chuckled. "Not in so many words, I suppose." He finally turned to look at Jack fully for the first time. "And what about you? What brings you out here?"

"I _was_ having a nice evening out with, uh...a friend when those things showed up and started shooting. Speak of, I really gotta go find her now. We got separated in the madness."

"Ah, of course. Go find your companion. We'll speak again soon."

John slipped back into the night as easily as he'd appeared, and Jack returned to near the place he had last seen Marie. Officers and medics had control of the scene now, plus firefighters who were searching the collapsed scaffolding for trapped individuals. Smoke from the still-burning fires enveloped the entire area in a sooty haze. Jack squinted experimentally, but his better-than-average night vision was made for the dark, not for this.

"Hey!" A PD officer had spotted him and was stalking over. "We need everyone off this street!"

As the man got closer, his eyes locked onto Jack's face and narrowed as if trying to place it. Jack shifted his own gaze to just above the officer's eyebrows—a de-escalation trick he'd learned—and kept his stance open like he had nothing to hide. The officer was taller than him and had a hard jaw, and Jack couldn't help raising his own chin in response as the officer stared him down.

Something red flashed beyond the officer's ear, and a pretty little voice rang out.

"Jack!"

The unexpected sound caught the officer off guard, and Jack could tell from his expression that he didn't know what to make of this girl striding out of the smoke in a sparkly red half-shirt, her arms and chest smeared with blood.

"Miss, are you hurt?" he asked, taking a step towards her as she approached.

"I'm fine," she assured him. Then she looked at Jack, who was frowning at the blood. "We can go. Most of the civilians have gotten out, and they have a handle on those who are left."

"Right," he said as if he'd been part of that all along.

"Be safe, officer," Marie said to the badge still looking at her, and it took the man a second to get over his perplexity.

"You too, miss."

For the second time that evening, Jack found himself walking down the cross street with the smell of blood wafting beside him. "We should get you something to clean off with, or at least a blanket."

Marie predictably dismissed the suggestion. "I'd rather save those supplies for people that need them," she said, but then frowned as a new thought struck her. "Does the sight bother you?"

"No," he said, and he decided to prove it by pulling her into his arms. She snuggled against him with a little purr of contentment, and it was hard to say at that point who was keeping who warm.

"So," he drawled after a little while. "Field medicine, huh? Does this mean you're gonna run out and be a hero every time the city gets attacked? Because that sort of thing happens around here more than we would like."

"No, not every time," she said, smiling against his chest.

"How'd you learn it?"

"My...the closest word you have would be 'godfather', I guess. He taught me the basics as well as self-defense. He'd fought in two wars himself and then some, so he's a rather strong advocate of survival and self-reliance." She turned her head in the direction of the battle. "He was a Power Ranger too."

"Hold up. Your 'godfather' was SPD?"

"No, not SPD. His team was native."

"What does that mean?"

"It means their Power originated from their planet, the world it was intended to protect. Native Ranger teams are usually chosen from the native population, hence the term. Those worlds have no need for the defense services of Space Patrol Delta."

"So you're saying some planets out there have SPD Rangers like Earth does, but others like..." He wanted to say 'Bavaria', but knew he'd be invariably wrong. For the life of him, he could never remember the name of the planet Marie had said she'd come from. "...like yours have 'native' Rangers, and your godfather was one of them?"

"You mean Karova?" Marie said innocently.

"Yeah, there."

"Yes, that's right."

"Is he still a Ranger?"

"No. There's a new team now."

"How'd they get the job?"

Marie shrugged. "Only they know. There isn't an academy like SPD has, if that's what you mean."

"How else would you learn something like that?"

"You'd have to ask them. It's different from planet to planet, for native teams anyway." Marie stopped tracing patterns against his back and glanced up. "You're awfully curious about this. How come?"

_That is respectable power. It doesn't belong in the hands of children._

_My godfather was a Power Ranger too._

Something was percolating in his brain, but it was too faint to know what or even why.

"I'm just learning a lot of new things tonight," he said, "including some things about _you_." He leaned down and touched his nose to hers. "You're not a Power Ranger, are you?"

She pecked him on the lips like he'd hoped she would. "No. Definitely not."


End file.
